Would Spelling Lessons Affect the Library?

One John McAllister, president of Friends of the San Diego Library, is sending out scare messages to San Diegans, warning, "Library services will be threatened if Proposition D fails." McAllister's second sentence reads, "The proposition calls for a temporary sales tax increase that takes AFFECT (emphasis mine) only if ten City financial reforms, including changes to employee pensions, retirement benefits and City operations, are enacted." The correct word, of course, is "EFFECT." Tsk, tsk. Later, McAllister boasts, "a coalition of firefighters, police, business, labor leaders and the San Diego Union-Tribune HAVE (emphasis mine) endorsed Proposition D." Since "coalition" is the subject of the sentence, the verb should be HAS, but this isn't bothersome, and some might argue that "coalition" could be considered plural.

The scare tactics of fire, police, library, and other City officials at public forums -- warning what will happen if Proposition D fails -- are really bothersome, as well as amoral. One citizen sat at a forum attended mainly by older people. This citizen said the horror stories of recreation center and library closings, as well as the cutting back of police and fire protection, amounted to something close to elder abuse.

Comments

Thanks Don! Felony grammar crimes, if Prop D loses, will skyrocket! Lock your keyboards in the safe and cease writing all letters of complaint to City employees. The grammatical errors in their responses are already out of control and will just get worse.

Seriously, I'm looking for a report on the War Memorial Building town hall to scare the bejezuz out of us anti-Prop D idiots. What happened? Todd the D3-God-squad-Gloria twittered "Huge turnout at tonight's City Budget Town Hall in D3. Many San Diegans concerned about potential budget cuts. http://twitpic.com/31qcdc "

Thanks Don! Felony grammar crimes, if Prop D loses, will skyrocket! Lock your keyboards in the safe and cease writing all letters of complaint to City employees. The grammatical errors in their responses are already out of control and will just get worse.

As a former grammar and research tutor at that award-winning English Writing Center on the campus of San Diego City College, I cringe at the thought of a Bauderian review of any and all comments that I HAVE made on the Scam Diego blog posts...

My personal description of what ails America in general and San Diego in particular may be gross but appropriate for the up-coming trick-or-treat season: boils that need lancing and draining, or the infection of unethical corruption will spread to all aspects of life, resulting in death to the civic cohesion that should act to hold us together as a city and a nation. The only "easy money" to be found in in all of Fletcher's midnight SB 863 earmark is that which flows from the taxpayers to the developers, where the mayor-sanctioned bailout in the amended state redevelopment statutes benefits CCDC specifically by name.

CCDC is that parasitic beast that lives among us, and now by law there is no limit on the tax increment revenue that it takes from general property tax revenues for its "master", the Redevelopment Agency that is personally directed by a majority of our city council members.

Hopefully, eventually, finally, the truth just might set us free. The election results may be telling.

Response to post #3: On his blog, Pat Flannery pointed out some grammatical mistakes made by scaremonger bureaucrats at these so-called "forums," which are nothing more than propaganda sessions. Best, Don Bauder

"The scare tactics of fire, police, library, and other City officials at public forums -- warning what will happen if Proposition D fails"

Don, you have warned San Diegans continuously about the U-T and their sponsorship of republican political and economic corruption that rules San Diego, and now they are threatening us with even more destruction of San Diego quality of life because their betrayals have resulted in public safety and education systems failures that are totally out of control.

Thus corruption by the U-T and their succession of puppet-Mayors Golding, Murphy and Sanders has resulted in their latest criminal threats against the safety of every family in San Diego to perpetuate the U-T culture of grand larceny.

Response to post #4: Before going BK, the City should go to employee unions and confront them with this choice: draconian compensation slashes and layoffs or steep voluntary retirement compensation cutbacks. But if Prop. D passes, government will not have to force the issue -- at least for a year or two. Best, Don Bauder

Response to post #5: I hope the public has caught on to the pension scam. But do San Diegans realize the basic objectives of Prop. D? 1. It is a wide-open move to ease the way for a $600 million/$700 million subsidy for the Chargers; 2. Its passage would permit politicians to avoid facing the pension issue, which is breaking the city; 3. The so-called savings that are said to accompany the tax increase are phony as a three dollar bill; 4. The politicians backing it are protecting their own unconscionably generous pensions. Best, Don Bauder

Response to post #7: I don't know how well the public grasps the CCDC scam. I'm not sure many San Diegans realize how their money is grabbed and plunked into pockets of plutocrats by CCDC. Best, Don Bauder

Response to post #9: After the Prop. D vote -- whether it succeeds or fails -- San Diegans should learn about the scare statements by bureaucrats protecting their own pensions and fat salaries. I know that some of these sessions have been taped. The tapes should be circulated. On the federal level, the Hatch Act bans such self-interest politicking by government employees. Best, Don Bauder

The bailout language is not only open-ended for eliminating the tax increment cap altogether, but is also changed without future state legislative votes by incorporating future local amendments to San Diego redevelopment plans. In my view, this goes much farther than any proper legislative grant of mere regulatory power to a state agency that acts as a legislative body to create regulations on its own.

A great solution to the City scare tactics would be to give all menial jobs to the Alpha Project and the San Diego Urban Corps, who are allowed to pay minimum wage instead of the prevailing wage of $13+ per hour. The City already outsources community cleanups and restoration projects to these two outside non-union groups, that have $1 million in insurance, and the do the job the City Unions won't like brush clearance. Plus they live within City limits, and would be honored to serve our City instead of being unemployed.

According to the same Park and Recreation Department Director Stacey LoMedico who wrote the Fiscal Year 2012 Budget Reduction Scenerios Memo below:

The legal and correct process for Volunteers and citizens to take over the cleaning of the Fire Pits, and cleaning of the public restrooms in downtown for the Homeless and at the Beaches, requires many steps.

Step 1. Establish a non-profit organization,

Step 2. Obtain a Right of Entry Permit from the City of San Diego,

Step 3. Enter into a written contract and Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the City to maintain the fire pits in accordance with Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs).

Step 4. Obtain $1 million dollars for insurance liability with the total amount determined by the Risk Management department.

Step 5. Meet and confer with the City Unions as required by the ballot initiative passed by voters for Managed Competition.

Alpha Project, San Diego Urban Corps, and various religous, civic, and environmental groups are already Non-Profits, have Right of Entry permits for public land, have Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) regarding expected minimum Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), and have $1 million in insurance.

Many students, community members, and library patrons would love to Volunteer at Libraries and Recreation Centers to extend the hours opened. We already own the building and land. All we need is someone to be responsible in every community, instead of closing down public assets.

Before going BK, the City should go to employee unions and confront them with this choice: draconian compensation slashes and layoffs or steep voluntary retirement compensation cutbacks.

Will never happen. The ones there now will sell out their future co workers while at the same time forcing HUGE debts on future generations, children, grand children and great grandchildren, so THEY can leech off the current system as much as possible, milk it until it dies.

Here is a great link that describes this problem down to the T(short & good read);

A great solution to the City scare tactics would be to give all menial jobs to the Alpha Project and the San Diego Urban Corps, who are allowed to pay minimum wage instead of the prevailing wage of $13+ per hour. The City already outsources community cleanups and restoration projects to these two outside non-union groups, that have $1 million in insurance, and the do the job the City Unions won't like brush clearance. Plus they live within City limits, and would be honored to serve our City instead of being unemployed.

Now this is a fantastic solution to some of our problems, not a good solution, a fantastic solution.

It pays less (and face it $13 an hour plus whatever benefits for these city jobs is double market rate) which allows MORE people to be employed. Minimum wage in the state today is decent.

WHY doesn't the coucil follow this model??? It is a no brainer IMO.

I just don't get these people who are leading our City. The Sanders stadium deal is the best example. It is a ridiculous and crazy thing to do, just perposterous, in fact it is about the worst thing the leader of our city could do at this time-yet here he is trying to give away a BILLION dollars while the city is technically bankrupt.

Sanders has been the biggest flop as an elected Mayor for as long as I have lived here-worse than Murphy IMO.

Hi SurfPuppy619. Thanks for the compliment. Instead of pro-bono work I will be coming out of retirement in January 2011 to start my own consulting firm in Civil Engineering, Public Policy, Land Use, and Historic Preservation.

Politics in San Diego is a death sport, and too brutal for my sensibilities.

Response to post #21: You have a point. That's why many -- myself included -- believe that a number of cities on the financial brink should try to do something about outrageous retirement sums already vested or being received. It will be a tough legal job, no doubt winding up at the Supreme Court. That's why several cities should band together to share the legal expense. What's urgently necessary is that current employees MUST pay much more toward their own retirements. And these early retirements (age 50, 55, etc.) must go. There is no reason city employees cannot work as long as private sector workers, whose retirement ages will have to be extended to qualify for Social Security and Medicare. Best, Don Bauder

Thanks but no thanks, LaPlaya: having watched Urban Corps workers around the City, I'll pass on letting them have right of entry in my neighborhood. Some of the guys and gals I have observed seemed like diligent sweepers, etc., but most I've seen sat behind bushes or leaned against walls, eyeing the neighborhood, keeping an eye out for the truck with their supervisor. I don't like unsupervised kids in my neighborhood, studying the coming/going and presence/absence of residents, accountable to no one in government...
There is a problem with UC workers' lack of expertise and a bigger problem with their lack of supervision. There are well-documented studies of some damage they've done in area canyons, because of lack of expertise and worker supervision. There is also high turnover at all UC levels (except for the top guys, a major Ben Hueso donor pool, who are very well paid CEOs and directors of this "nonprofit").

And...the County sheriff brings bus loads of prisoners into my canyon regularly, and does a great job of clearing brush. I like that those workers are VERY supervised!

Response to post #25: For most elected officials in San Diego, the money that flows from developers and the establishment -- under-the-table and otherwise -- compensates for that brain damage from special interest pressure. Best, Don Bauder

Response to post #30: It would be fitting if some of the local pols went to the hoosegow, and came back as supervised prisoners to clean up neighborhoods that they had voted to desecrate. Best, Don Bauder

I guess then they all would then really "Clean Up" San Diego,
and we would have all the Guards to insure that they finally did,
What they promised!
+
I Love a clean SD,
Especially if our Leaders did the cleaning up,
Instead of the Cleaning "OUT"

Response to post #36: Go to my Scam Diego blog of Sept. 30, 2010, 9:33 a.m. Click the place where you can see all the City of San Diego retirement pay -- including the most generous one, a whopping $300,000 a year for an assistant city attorney. City worker retirement pay is simply a colossal ripoff of taxpayers; there is no other way to state it. See for yourself. Best, Don Bauder

They are already getting Rich "on the clock" and are just waiting to start enjoying their EXTRA HUGE Retirement Pensions, thanks to all the past and present City Councils that have feathered their own bed at the same time as "paying off" the Unions that got them elected!

This is Double Trouble for our City's Fiscal Recovery; which will now require Bankruptcy, unless our Unions and Pensioners agree to self reduce their "TAKE," the probability of which, is almost ZERO!

Our City has been financially raped for many years and we are only now finding out about it because the current nationwide economic meltdown is preventing our current Leaders to continue to "Bond until they retire"...

Alpha Project and the San Diego Urban Corps are some examples of existing Non-Profits, who already have Right-of-Entry Permits for our public land, have Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) regarding expected minimum Standard Operating Procedures (SOP), and have $1 million in insurance.

Right-of-Entry Permits are required for Non-City personnel to perform work on our public property under the City’s Managed Competition program. To outsource anything but Public Safety, a minimum Living Wage of $13.20 per hour is required of private For-Profit companies who want to compete for City contracts.

When Outsourcing companies, Volunteers, or Non-Profit organizations plan to work on City-owned property, a Right-Of-Entry Permit is needed by several differing departments based upon the jurisdiction of the property in conjunction with Engineering and Capital Projects and the City Attorney’s office. The Departments that have ownership and jurisdiction include Parks and Recreation, Open Space Division, Water, Storm Water, Street Division, or Real Estate Assets.

Currently the City of San Diego also has several additional Right-of-Entry Permits and MOU with other Volunteer religious, civic, and environmental groups including:

Response to post #39: The only difference between French government employees and San Diego government employees is that in France, they retire very young with a modest pension. In San Diego, they retire very young with a fat pension. Best, Don Bauder

Response to post #40: Yes, DeMaio is getting a lot of mileage out of that comparison -- the head SD librarian getting a much larger pension than a four-star general. Kudos to KUSI for showing that. Best, Don Bauder

There are ideas in this comment thread that deserve not to die. While Urban Corps may have problems in the consistency of service delivery due to spotty management and supervision, its usage to augment local city crews in relatively mundane tasks shows that there are alternatives to having city crews do the work alone at much higher cost.

There are many points to consider, but the most important to consider right now is that we are the people of California, and we have sovereign rights as the people of California. In the past decade the people of California have removed a sitting governor for perceived political negligence of the needs of the people, and we did do this while the state commander-in-chief of the militia had California National Guard units serving overseas in combat zones, something that triggers the possible use of all kinds of wartime authority under the Military and Veterans Code. We recently amended our state constitution several times, and while some of those amendments are being challenged all the way to the nation's highest court, they are the law as far as our state's highest court has let them stand here now. After all, it is our court.

In short, the theme here is that the people of California are a lawful source of sovereign authority over any part of the state where we choose to exercise sovereign power. It is impossibly inconsistent to insist that we do what is necessary to destroy California as a benefit to the people because there is no benefit in that at all; therefore, we must do what is necessary to save the state or any part of it when any and all of California seems determined to walk off a cliff. We have that power.

This is not a radical revolutionary theory but the natural conclusion of the United States Department of Homeland Security's National Response Framework as a comprehensive, all-hazard approach to emergency management, and comprehensive emergency management by objectives is the guiding principle in planning, preparing, mitigating, responding and recovering from disasters and risks of all possible emergency incidents under the National Incident Management System and Incident Command System usage of resources to get those objectives accomplished. Under DHS/FEMA's National Response Framework, NIMS/ICS is active at all times and does not require a national state of emergency to be used in any level of response. We have the power when we choose to use it under NRF NIMS/ICS authority.

Our city council regularly makes continuing declarations of this crisis and that crisis but does relatively little about them. We have the power by virtue of municipal neglect on the part of civic leaders.

If we wait around for a vote to volunteer and mitigate things that we both see and understand are totally FUBARed, then we end up wasting time when the law already says that we can mitigate public nuisances in the public interest without necessarily waiting around for permission to do it, regardless of anybody's union contract or other legal-sounding theory that would cost us the federal reimbursement of a legitimate all-hazard response to impending (or existing and declared) crises.

I am not arguing that the entire city council is a public nuisance; that would be going too far because it would cost much money and many lives to stage a coup. Instead, it is clear that the results of some to many acts of that city council ARE public nuisances and may therefore be at least subject to our own voluntary mitigation, especially when it is foreseeable that the acts and omissions by civic leaders lead to some level of hell for the people of San Diego.

If we aren't allowed that, then there may be a good argument in Superior Court that lawful process has been prevented from being carried out and thus lawlessness exists in the County of San Diego.